Royal bedfellows

Charles II was never short of a lady friend, as this historical romp finds out.

Weave your way through the wacky wigs, the devious politics and the bed-bouncing infidelities of Charles II and his extended dysfunctional family and you can't help but be struck by what writer Adrian Hodges calls the "disturbingly contemporary resonance" of the affairs that kept the king so busy.

The tabloids of his time must have loved him.

Hodges, who wrote the scripts for the four-hour $9.5 million BBC TV series Charles II: The Power and the Passion, says the truth is that while not looking for any obvious parallels for the drama with today's royals, they were there.

"Somebody said to me, 'Oh you must have been thinking of that famous quote that Diana made about there not being room in this marriage for all three of us,'" Hodges tells me from London. "I do have a line that isn't wholly dissimilar in the first or second hour.

"But the truth is that you can't actually get away from these parallels. You don't have to put them in; they're just there. I think it's really more a question of saying, 'Why do royal families keep behaving in the same way?' They obviously have too much time on their hands, don't they."

Charles II: The Power and the Passion is the story of the man whose father was executed by Oliver Cromwell but who returned from exile in Europe to restore the monarchy. In school history books, he was the king who led England through the horrors of the Great Plague in 1665 and The Fire of London in 1666 as well, perhaps, as a dalliance with actress Nell Gwynne.

But, as Hodges and actor Rufus Sewell show us with contemporary dialogue and busy bedside manners in this racy, voluptuous entertainment, there was a lot more to Charles II than ever reached the blackboard. Charles II was never short of a lady friend.

And, when it came to the crunch, facing up to that moment before Parliament that proved so pivotal to British history, he proved he had the right stuff.

Hodges admits there are many historical gaps in his series. They are clear from the start. No hiding in oak trees, no prince-on-the-run scenes. We leap ahead from earlier battles and the complexities of those years before exile.

"In the four hours I had, I felt we really should concentrate on a behind-the-scenes view of that world and what it would have been like making those decisions, as well as on the palace, the life that was led," he says.

"It was partly a budgetary thing. It had to be bedrooms, hallways and meeting chambers. I couldn't do big battle scenes; I couldn't go outside.

"The Scottish campaign is a whole story in itself. In many ways I'd loved to have done that, but I really feel it's kind of another film. It's also hideously confused, as I'm sure you know!"

Both producer Kate Harwood and director Joe Wright shared his view on keeping the focus for the series within the court. "Joe wanted to make it very close-up and personal, very intimate and very modern," Hodges says. "That was my feeling too ... so we had a very, very close collaboration."

Historians are easily divided over their attitudes to Charles II. Some consider his reaction to certain events as lazy and cynical. Others find an immensely sympathetic character, though undoubtedly ruthless on occasions.

Hodges says though he was sympathetic his TV portrait did cover the ambiguities. Charles, he says, brings a lot of his problems upon himself.

As to presenting the drama in the language of today, Rufus Sewell's Charles II never falls into the traps of Ray Winstone's Cockney Henry VIII. In this show only Nell Gwynne sounds as if she has dropped in from EastEnders ... and that's probably fair enough.

"It's difficult," Hodges says. "How can you make people believe they're watching the era you're describing, without making them feel intimidated or unnerved by it? And by the same token, how do you make it not sound ridiculous?

"If you rub people's noses in anachronisms, or slang, or phrases that just weren't ... not so much weren't used but just aren't believable, then obviously you're getting it all wrong."

Charles II: The Power and the Passion never lets its politics get in the way of all the rumpy-pumpy. This show is packed with it, wigs and pantaloons flying in all directions as the Dutch sack English fleets and the French do what the French always do to keep the English on the run.

But did Hodges indulge in dramatic licence in his portrayal of Charles's love life? Historian David Starkey doesn't think so.

Charles may not have had the good looks of a Rufus Sewell, but he was, he suggests, something of a wannabe Casanova: "He was an extraordinary man; a master of deviousness, he used wit as an instrument and his sexuality had an almost desperate quality."

Hodges says that, if anything, he underplayed the royal enthusiasm. "I couldn't keep up with it," he says.

"He was absolutely prodigious. I chose four mistresses and one wife, who were kind of representative. But there were dozens upon dozens. That's kind of why English history, at any rate, has been relatively kind to Charles, because they kind of think he's rather fun.

"And he was such a lover of women. Too much so, really, to the point where he neglected state affairs and drove his advisors crazy because he'd rather spend time with women than attend to his papers."

This also allowed his critics to accuse him of decadence and for a Church suspicious of his Catholic leanings to attack his behaviour.

Charles, however, did show a curious though remarkable sort of loyalty to Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess who became his wife. Shirley Henderson overcomes a Bride of Frankenstein wig in the series to win his heart and ours as poor Catherine. There was no heir, but no divorce or beheading. You might call it an arranged friendship.

The king was also "loyal" to his mistresses, including a weepy blonde French under-the-doona spy. He was particularly generous with the likable Nell Gwynne.

But it is that spectacularly calculating dangerous liaison with Barbara de Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, that steals the show. Hodges agrees she is the most magnificent minx of the mistresses.

"She's one of those characters who just jumps off the page at you. She absolutely captivated me from the word go. She's a bit scary, though she just seemed to me to be wonderful.

"The only difference in life was that she was so young. She was, I think, 17 or something when she met him, fantastically young. And we obviously felt that would be hard for people now to understand. She had a baby every year for like about five or six years."

Lady Castlemaine is played by Helen McCrory as a slightly more mature, sexually avaricious temptress, described by one English critic as "a crotch-seeking missile with bags under her eyes, presumably from lack of sleep."

McCrory may think the latter description a little unkind, but, she says, the role of Barbara was the best in the drama, producing many opportunities. She was thrilled she had been offered it.

It involves her in a great many sexual scenes. Lady Castlemaine sleeps with the king and his bastard son within minutes of each other, shortly after being pleasured by a cousin, or was that the monarch's mate, the wily Buckingham? Whoever, whatever, she is certainly kept busy on her back.

Did McCrory baulk at anything required of her in the script?

"Well originally there was a lot more nudity," she says. "In fact, most of the scenes were nude, and I wasn't comfortable doing that. I didn't think it required it. And so I had a no-nudity clause in my agreement.

"I had to go for a nipple viewing at one point ... apparently a nipple was showing in one scene, so I had to sit there with various executives and [she says, laughing] my contract. It was one of the most bizarre meetings I've ever had with the people in British television, I must admit. But apart from that, no there was nothing."

Considering Lady Castlemaine was also required to chomp off a dead archbishop's unnecessaries as one of her party tricks later in the piece, the producers seem to have escaped lightly.

"Some say that happened, other historians, of course, say it's fabricated bullshit," she says. "Barbara was a Catholic, so a lot of these things were spun up because of the fear of her influence, you know, on Charles.

"But I would have believed it of her, quite frankly. She was off the rails at that point. She'd given birth to 10 children and had about six lovers, including her black manservant at the time. I think her tenuous link on reality was probably let go of at that point."

Lady Castlemaine, she says, was for 10 years Charles's main lover. She was described as "the most magnificent animal of her age" and though she was undoubtedly "carnally ambitious" there were contradictions in her character. Her love for her children, her courage and her boldness were, for example, all extraordinary.

"When a stadium collapsed at one of the races, she was the only courtier to actually jump across all the broken logs and haul children out from among the piles. She had a tremendous hold over Charles but eventually scuppered herself by becoming too politically involved."

McCrory herself is well known here for her outstanding performances in the TV series Anna Karenina, in North Square and in The Jury.

She is the daughter of a diplomat and physiotherapist, spent her childhood in Africa and Europe, and has firm views on equality and human rights. For some time, she also enjoyed a relationship with actor Rufus Sewell.

"Rufus and I, as you probably know, were an item for many years, years and years ago, so it was wonderful to be able to work with him, because we'd always left the relationship as very good friends," she says.

"Although we hadn't seen each other, it allowed us a sort of shorthand. When you know and you trust somebody very well, you can create an intimacy very quickly. And it was great fun to be with him again."

There are strong scenes for McCrory, but one of the most impressive is Lady Castlemaine's apparent final solemn exit from the palace, a slow march in the sort of skull-white facial make-up of Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth I so many years earlier. A rosebud of lipstick masks all emotion.

"It was actually done as my last scene. It was an occasion to rise to, and I enjoyed that tremendously," she says.

It also rivals Rufus Sewell's chill-down-the-spine performance as King Charles II faces his enemies in Parliament. For Hodges, that moment really is the one that had to work.

"You need an artist, an actor, with enormous charisma to pull it off," Hodges says. "It was always the scene that I knew I was leading up to. It is an absolutely crucial decision in Charles's reign, in our history ... that one moment when he pulls everything together and takes responsibility and faces down his enemies.

"It is the crucial scene in this drama. Read the primary accounts from 350 years ago and you will find it such an extraordinary event. It really was like that. There really was this moment where they all bowed and all went down on one knee, even these rather hardcore evangelical Protestants.

"I still find it intensely powerful, I must say. I hope that it helps others now find what Charles II did there just as meaningful, and in the end this look at history just as satisfying to them."

THE MAKING OF MONARCH

Charles II: 1630-1685

The eldest surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria was eight years old when civil war broke out in England. He was 12 when he fought his first battle alongside his father at Edgehill in Warwickshire, eventually ordered by the beleaguered king to seek asylum in France. Charles I, to the horror of the Scots, was executed in 1649 and England became a republic. Scotland invited the prince to come to Scotland and he was then proclaimed king in Edinburgh and Dublin.

1649: Monarchy and the House of Lords are abolished.

The Commonwealth is declared.

1651: Charles invaded England from Scotland, but was seriously injured in battle at Worcester and hid in an oak tree while escaping.

1658: Oliver Cromwell dies.

1659: Charles opens secret negotiations with General Monck from exile in the Netherlands, promising general amnesty, religious liberty and other conciliatory measures. This leads to ...

1660: The Declaration of Breda and Charles's restoration to the throne. He boarded ship for England with his brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, his aunt Elizabeth, who was Queen of Bohemia, his sister Mary who was the Princess Royal and her son, William, who was the Prince of Orange and who one day would be King of England himself.